“If you assumed Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer was tech’s worst CEO, think again. CNBC’s ‘Mad Money’ host Jim Cramer said that honor goes to Michael Dell,” Tom Brennan reports for CNBC.
Advertisement: The New iMac – The Ultimate All-in-One. Turbocharged. Starting at $1,199.00 $1,164.99
“While Ballmer has presided over a 52% drop in his company’s stock price since taking over in 2000, Dell has him beat with a 70% loss,” Brennan reports. “Behind that decline is a man who let his success in the PC market during the 1990s ride a little too far, it seems, as the world switched its focus to cloud computing and smartphones, leaving Dell the company behind. ‘He’s guilty of laziness,’ Cramer said of Dell, ‘of sitting on his laurels, allowing his company to go from leader to laggard while its stock crumbled beneath his feet.'”
“Today’s focus on Michael Dell was part of an ongoing series Cramer is doing on the business world’s worst CEOs,” Brennan reports. “With Tony Hayward forced out of the top spot at BP, the Mad Money host needs a new face for his Wall of Shame. Dell more than qualifies.”
“First, the CEO, who served from 1984 to 2004 and then returned in 2007, moved too late to transition Dell away from the low-growth PC market,” Brennan reports. “And second, the company spends virtually nothing – just 1% of revenues – on research and development… This means Dell doesn’t innovate, and therefore can’t compete on quality. Instead it focuses on pricing. But it’s even losing that war now as Asian manufacturers like Acer enter the market.”
Brennan reports, “The kicker, of course, is that Michael Dell has collected $454 million in pay over the last 10 years. Remember, that came while his shareholders were losing 70% of their investment. Compare that to Apple’s Steve Jobs, who earned three quarters of a billion dollars in the past decade but delivered 968% of upside for his shareholders.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s tough to execute a turnaround with your big fat foot in your mouth. SIDAGTMBTTS.
How the fsck does Mikey find sunglasses that fit?
One thing’s for sure, if that bastard was on the swim team, he went goggle-less.
Mikey’s so cross-eyed, he has to sit sideways at the movie theater.
Maybe he can build the “Next of Kin.”
Some dead-ass tablet thing.
And never forget the SEC fine against Mr. Dell for cooking the books: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/business/23dell.html?src=busln
This was waaay worse than stock options backdating – it was deliberate accounting fraud, concealing the true source of DELL’s income – exclusivity payoffs from Intel. Mr. Dell should be prohibited from having anything to do with a publicly traded company.
And let’s not forget that MSFT at least pays regular (and occasionally hefty) dividends. DELL does not.
Piss off Dell
Obviously he’s not going to shut it down because he (Michael Dell) is busy drawing a large salary for doing nothing. He’s happy as long as he collects his paycheck. It’s the shareholders who need to revolt to get him removed.
Skunky Boy overtakes Monkey Boy
That caricature gets me every time
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” />
He should sell his house and move in to something 70% smaller.
http://www.satellite-sightseer.com/id/1500
Oh how the Big-Ass-Tables have turned!!!
He should give the money back to the stockholders after he uses a substantial portion of it to get his eyes fixed.
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/10/08/flashback-10-years-ago-michael-dells-throwdown/
I have a friend who toured the Dell campus in the late 90s. He describes large electronic screens in the lobby of every building displaying Dell’s real-time stock price. That was the era of the Dellionaires in the Austin region.
Dell managed to ride the simple concept of make-it-cheaper for quite a ways, but who with half a brain couldn’t see he was painting himself into a corner against Asians who can make it cheaper yet.
I wonder at what point those stock price screens were carted off.
I don’t know if I agree… Dell or Ballmer…..
Perhaps its too close to call.
http://www.satellite-sightseer.com/id/1500
I visited that link and I couldn’t find a house. I saw a tennis court and pool surrounded by a small office complex or strip mall or with a parking lot. Did I miss the house? Is it in the clump of trees at the top?…
Or is the whole damn thing the “house” and there is no account for taste?!
Cramer nails another!
Dell still sells 10 times more computers than Apple, so they must be better.
TOTALLY CORRECT.
So, Mike. Are you ready to take your own advice yet? Shut the doors and give back the money to the stock holders. (Is there any to give back?)
Yes, Steve Ballmer went to school with Cramer and Dell should be up there on the Wall of Shame. However, Microsoft will loose control of the PC market of today and tomorrow. Microsoft will become your old man’s OS run in those crap PC boxes. Ballmer will drag Microsoft to the bottom of irrelevance and MadMoney is about where stocks are going and like Palm, Ballmer see Zero in Microsoft’s future! So, Ballmer needs to be on the bench ready for the Wall of Shame!
Jim Cramer just made sense. Here come the locusts.
Balmer is still worst!
I’d still have to go with Ballmer based on his quoted public pronouncements:
Jul 29, 5:57 PM (ET)
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) – Microsoft will compete with Apple’s iPad, but it isn’t saying when.
Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer says the company is working with Intel Corp. and computer makers to perfect tablet touch-screen computers.
Analysts attending an annual meeting at Microsoft headquarters on Thursday got few concrete details. Ballmer did say Windows tablets will use Intel processors for the foreseeable future.
Ballmer said, “We’ll be in market as soon as we can.”
But he added that whether it’s “really, really soon, or just really, pretty soon, I’m going to wait until I have a device I want to hand you and tell you to go use.”
Ballmer says Apple Inc. has “done an interesting job” with the iPad, and says Apple has sold more of the devices than he would like.
He looks like he`s holding a toke in.
Exhale there guy!
Goes to show that just because you can build a cheap PC doesn’t make you a “technologist” or real businessman.
Idea for a bumper sticker: “Buy a Dell, Burn In Hell!”
I really question the intelligence, common sense and sanity of any one who says that a Dell (or any Windows machine for that matter) is a good computer.
I suppose some, make that many, people don’t and will never know better.
Their business model was flawed to begin with. Your primary advantage is price. You can only whittle so much of out the cost of manufacturing a PC. If you have nothing of value to add besides chipping a few bucks off, eventually you paint yourself into corner.
Dell has nothing to differentiate themselves among a crowded marketplace of commodity PC’s since they don’t control the user experience.
Apple on the other had goes the other way, offering more value and features through the OS and software and can charge a premium price for it.
DELL HELL!!!